Friday, August 14, 2009

Facebookers Can Help Humankind

Facebookers (Facebook Users) can now contribute to human kind. Do you know that now YOU, Facebook users can help to find the cure for cancer. But how? Intel has recently introduced a software that lets Facebookers to devote their spare or extra computer power to researching diseases or climate change. Now how cool is that right? You see, the world's largest computer chip company has tandem with a nonprofit group called GripRepublic to create the Progress Thru Processors app based on the popular online social networking service's OS.

I'm sure a lot of Facebookers toy around with hundreds if not millions of apps in Facebook, so why not give this a try? This application enables Facebookers to grant idle computing power to work on projects for Rosetta@home, Climateprediction.net or Africa@home. Yes, you can choose either one or better still choose to volunteer for all 3 projects.

Choose one!

Rosetta@home utilises donated computing power to seek cures for cancer, HIV/AIDS, Alzheimer's and other diseases. It surely sounds like a noble deed aye. How about Climateprediciton.net then? Easily this project uses donated computing resource to enhance our understanding towards climate change by predicting and testing weather models. Likewise the third project, Africa@home is focused on finding clinical ways to tackle malaria by studying simulation models of disease transmission and the potential impact of new drugs and vaccines. How avout vaccines for H1N1?

According to GridRepublic executive director, Matt Blumberg, "The social and scientific utility of volunteer computing is a function of the number of participants; the more people sign up, then the greater the good we can collectively do." So people, the more of us are involved, the faster we can find the cures for a lot of diseases right? So what are you waiting? Click here to sign up now.

Screenshot of the application.

In July, Facebook reported that it has passed the 250 million member mark. Amazing, so Facebook is actually trying to give back to the public by teaming up with Intel to push this App. By signing up, what do we do? Those who volunteer are actually taking part in Progress Thru Processors essentially provide researchers with an online pool of computing power that can be harnessed to work on intricate tasks that would be impossible for a single machine.

Facebookers, do your bit by downloading the beta version of the Application at facebook.com/progressthruprocessors.Don't worry, this application is designed to run unnoticed as a background process on computers, according to Intel. In other words, it will run in "Stealth" mode? So have fun helping humankind ok. :D Who knows? Yoiu might be one of the people who helped to find the cancer cure right?